The Floating Islands (22 page)

Trei thought they were all hoping someone else would suggest staying safe on Bodonè, but no one did. They only stopped there to rest. Genrai shared out some hard bread he’d brought, gave everybody a flask to fill at a nearby pool, and brought out a sighting glass to measure against the stars as they began to come out. Trei, who hadn’t thought to bring any of those things, gave the older boy a respectful look. “Ceirfei was right—you do have sense.”

Genrai flushed. “I had time to think about what to bring while you went to visit your cousin.”

And he’d tried to live up to Ceirfei’s good opinion, yes. Trei understood that perfectly. He gestured toward the sighting glass. “Do you think we should fly at night?”

“No, do we have to?” Tokabii, examining his damaged wing, looked up in dismay. “I’m tired—and look at all these broken feathers! Lucky the arrows missed the primaries. Throw me that pouch of spares, Kojran, will you?”

Genrai looked grim. “We’ll get the worst-damaged feathers replaced, ’Kabii, but then I think we’d best press our speed. Don’t you?”

The boys all looked at one another. Trei knew they were all thinking about those Tolounnese ships, about the heavy air pressing the dragons away from the Islands and bringing Milendri down where the siege ladders could reach it. Tokabii bent his head over his repairs, but he didn’t object again.

“After Rekei, you’re the next best at star navigation,” Genrai said to Trei. He hesitated, then added deliberately, “Without you, we can’t go on at all, you know. None of the rest of us can do the math in our heads. Are you sure—?”

Trei knew Genrai was asking once more:
Are you sure
you
want to take the Islands’ side against Tolounn? Now that it comes to this, are you
sure
you’re willing to risk your life for the Islands?
His first impulse was toward anger: hadn’t he already answered those doubts two and three times over? But his anger died in the face of Genrai’s wary concern … which left room for all his doubts, which crowded into the forefront of his mind. He turned away from the other boys, staring away in the direction of Milendri.

Tolounn had everything: the artificers who’d made the steam engines, and the mages who’d figured out how to harness the huge power of those engines, and the slender iron-prowed warships, and all the soldiers. And Tolounn had the aggression and the, what, the will to win?

The Islands might share the will to win. But other than that, they had only the kajuraihi, who couldn’t even fly through the dead air the Tolounnese ships had brought with them. And the egg a fire dragon had given Araenè, which Araenè had in turn given to him. Had the dragon somehow known its sky kin were going to be forced away from their chosen habitation? Was
that
the reason, or a reason, it had given its egg to his cousin?

But Trei didn’t know how to put any of his questions or thoughts or decisions into words. At last he said merely, “I’m sure.”

Genrai gave him a slow nod, accepting this. “All right.”

Kojran, who’d been standing at the edge of the Island, shading his eyes and staring up into the sky, turned and shouted, “The first stars are out!”

Genrai nodded again. “Then I think we’d better fly.”

Trei returned the older boy’s nod. But then he hesitated, glancing at the other novices. “Tokabii, Kojran—you could stay here.”

“What? No!” said Tokabii, offended.

Kojran, to Trei’s surprise, actually seemed to consider this suggestion. “No,” he said at last. “Not here.” He hesitated for another moment and then added, “Maybe at a waystation. Like Kerii?” He looked at Genrai.

“Maybe,” said Genrai.

“What?” asked Trei, confused.

“It’s from a play,” Genrai said. “Never mind, Kojran, no need to explain it right now. Trei, you go first. Do you have your heading clear? Straight north until, um, would it be half past third bell? Then ten points north-northeast, and we should be just about on top of the first waystation by dawn, if we hold a good pace. We don’t want to make it before dawn, though.”

Because if they reached the floating rock of the waystation in the dark, he meant, they would probably fly right past it. “If we do miss the first waystation,” Trei asked, “how much farther to the second?”

“Too far,” Genrai said, and waited, his eyes on Trei’s. When Trei slowly nodded, Genrai went on, “We’ll go high first, dive to get speed, hold a fast pace. Kojran and Tokabii, you’ll fly out to either side of Trei, half a span back. I’ll come behind—you boys will have to stay in place because I’ll be too far back to see Trei. Hear me?”

The younger Third City boys both looked insulted. “Go on!” Kojran said scornfully. “You think we can’t hold a formation?”

“It’ll be harder when you’re tired,” Genrai said. “Ninety miles to the first waystation. You both think you can do that? Don’t say yes if you mean no: no one will be able to carry you if you can’t make the distance.” He looked stern, and much older than seventeen.

Kojran said proudly, “We can make it. We’ve done ninety miles before.”

Not after fighting clear of Milendri while dodging arrows, then flying eighty miles to Bodonè, then resting for only a few bells. But no one pointed this out. Trei helped Tokabii with his wings while Genrai helped Kojran. Next he let Genrai help him with his own. Then he arched his wings, lifted straight up off the surface of the Island, and turned in a tight spiral, waiting for the others to join him.

10

T
he mages and adjuvants and apprentices of the Floating Islands—all but the legendary and, as far as Araenè could tell, possibly imaginary Master Cassameirin—watched the arrival of the Tolounnese ships from the highest balcony of the square-sided Horera Tower, the Tower of the Winds. But there were no winds today. Except where the ships’ oars splashed, the sea lay as flat and gray as though it had been beaten out of a sheet of pewter.

“Sheer power. No subtlety to it at all,” Master Akhai commented. Bearded, handsome, and the youngest of the masters, Master Akhai had intimidated Araenè from the first moment she’d met him: she felt that he looked too closely at things and noticed too much. But he wasn’t looking at her now. Nor was he watching the Tolounnese ships. His face was tilted up to the sky, his too-piercing gaze fixed on it. “They’ve forced the dragons out of the Islands. And if we’ve lost the dragon winds—” He caught the balcony railing as the whole Island of Milendri abruptly staggered in the air and dropped, in a series of unsteady lurches, toward the sea.

It felt like the Island was falling right out from under them.

Araenè’s sharp cry was disconcertingly high-pitched, but she hoped no one had heard it, lost as it was in the exclamations and shouts of the other apprentices and adjuvants. Master Tnegun closed a powerful hand on her elbow to help her stay on her feet, everyone was grabbing at the railing or the tower wall or each other, one of the adjuvants caught Taobai as he lost his balance, and Master Kopapei caught his little apprentice, Cesei. Jenekei and Sayai braced each other, but Tichorei missed his grab and fell to his knees, swearing in embarrassment and fear. His master, Master Camatii, leaned down to lift him back to his feet, and Araenè realized at last that Milendri was no longer falling. Maybe they weren’t all going to drown after all—well, that made sense; why would the Tolounnese have sent warships at all if they just meant to drown the Islands? She shrugged away from her master’s grip, embarrassed to have panicked.

Master Yamatei cautiously let go of Kebei and Kepai; he’d steadied one twin with each hand. He said to Master Akhai, “I think subtlety is not the rod by which the Tolounnese mages measure their success.” His dry, almost amused tone gave no indication of fear.

Master Yamatei was a bland, even insipid-looking man who, to Araenè, seemed to have exactly the appearance and manner of any midlevel ministry official. But the twins, who were his apprentices, had told her he was actually clever and subtle and very hard to fool about anything, so Araenè had avoided him almost as carefully as she had avoided Master Akhai. But Master Yamatei had other things to think about now and did not even seem to notice Araenè.

The healer mage, Master Camatii, shook his head at Master Yamatei’s black humor. “There will be bones broken just from that drop, though no Tolounnese soldier has yet set foot on Milendri. Imagine being on a stair when that happened. Worse: the Island itself won’t be the only thing that dropped. With the dragon winds gone, all our floating bridges and stairways will have fallen.” He glanced from Master Kopapei to Master Tnegun and back to Kopapei. “I should go. Shall I go? There will be work for me out in the city. If you have no suggestion for how else I should spend my efforts …”

“Indeed.” Big Master Kopapei looked grimmer than Araenè had ever imagined the good-humored master
could
look. “You must go. Tichorei, if you will?” With a gesture, he invited Camatii’s apprentice to join him.

Master Camatii looked at Tichorei, began to speak, closed his mouth again without saying a word, and gave his apprentice a gentle shove toward Kopapei. Then he beckoned to the three adjuvants nearest him and vanished. The three adjuvants vanished as well. The heavy air closed into the space where they’d stood with an audible but strangely flat sound.

Tichorei, his expression strained, joined Kanii and little Cesei near Master Kopapei. Two of the other adjuvants were also standing near Master Kopapei. One or two or three stood close to each of the masters. Araenè didn’t really know any of them; apprentices hardly ever spoke to adjuvants, and as far as she could tell, adjuvants put a certain dedication into keeping clear of apprentices. But at least the
adjuvants
knew what role they would play when the masters decided what to do: they would furnish the power the masters needed to act. Though she also knew there couldn’t be enough adjuvants in the whole world to match the sheer brute strength those ships carried with them, at least that was a useful—a
crucial
—role. What she wondered was what role the
apprentices
would play. If she was expected to do something herself, she was afraid that whatever it was, she probably would not be able to do it.

“If we were able to call back the winds, the dragons should return as well,” Master Akhai said to Master Kopapei. Araenè hadn’t really realized that Master Kopapei was in some way the head of the school, but she thought now, from the way the other mages deferred to him, that he must be. “Though I don’t know whether that’s of any practical importance, as I confess I don’t see any possible way we can break
that.
” Akhai gestured out over the balcony railing.

That?
What? Araenè peered out at the blank air. Whatever Master Akhai was indicating, she couldn’t see it. Tichorei and Taobai were both nodding; so were Kanii and Jenekei and the twins. Even little Cesei was nodding; could
everyone
see what Akhai meant except her? If she couldn’t, was that because she was so new, or because she hadn’t let Master Tnegun see into her mind, or simply because she was a girl? She glanced uncertainly at her master.

Master Tnegun was standing, one hand resting lightly on the railing, studying the Tolounnese ships. His dark face was calm, but there was a tightness around his eyes that told Araenè he was afraid. That frightened her. More. Aware of her gaze on him, he dropped his other hand to rest on her shoulder and smiled down at her. Araenè only wished she saw reassurance in that smile. But she could not pretend, even to herself, that she saw anything of the kind.

“It’s futile to set our strength against the augmented power of the Tolounnese mages,” Master Tnegun said to the other masters. “On the other hand … they must be thoroughly engaged with the necessity of holding Milendri in place. They can’t release the Island now: if they do, we might well sink to the bottom of the sea before the dragons could return with their winds to lift us back into the sky.”

“Possibly they’ll consider that a tactic rather than a problem,” Master Yamatei said drily.

“No,” Master Kopapei disagreed. “If they wanted to drown Milendri, they’d never have brought fifteen ships. No, Tnegun’s correct: they will neither allow the dragons to return nor allow us to drown.”

“And thus we may have identified the only two tactics that the Tolounnese will not use,” observed Master Tnegun, with a kind of grim amusement.

“Will they not?” Master Yamatei did not look as though he found this optimism persuasive. “The ability to drown Milendri is a threat we can’t answer. They must know it.”

Master Tnegun shook his head. “The Tolounnese do not by any means wish to make good any such threat. A threat you will not carry out is no threat. Thus the Tolounnese must exercise restraint, which gives us an opportunity. But if we will act at all, we must be swift, and if we are to make our presence felt, we must step sideways around their power, not meet it head-on.”

“You have a suggestion?” Master Yamatei asked. To Araenè’s surprise, she thought she heard an almost hostile note in his tone.

At that moment, the first siege ladder smashed against Milendri, maybe a thousand feet from where the mages stood. Then another, directly below the mages’ balcony—again, Araenè was not the only one to cry out, but again her cry was lost among the others. Both ladders raked downward, caught, and clung. Steam billowed out across the water. Black gulls wheeled, crying in outrage, as men began to climb upward from the Tolounnese ships. Araenè looked wildly at Master Tnegun.
Aren’t we going to do something?
Her master only gave her an absent little calm-down pat. Araenè couldn’t imagine why she should be calm, with the Tolounnese soldiers climbing up right toward their balcony—then the Tower of the Winds shivered, twisted itself somehow, and shifted half a mile to the north. From this distance, the Tolounnese ships were barely visible. But Araenè thought she could, even so far removed, hear the shouts of the Tolounnese soldiers and the screams of the people in the besieged part of the city.

“We cannot break the power of the Tolounnese mages!” Master Yamatei said, with a new urgency in his tone. “We dare not even
disrupt
it—unless we do not mind the Island falling into the sea. Some of us might find that outcome objectionable.”

Master Tnegun did not appear to notice the edge in the other mage’s tone. He merely replied, “We must leave be the mages and attack the men. It will not be enough, but it is what we can do—and perhaps, if we delay the Tolounnese victory, the kajuraihi may find a way to recall the dragon winds.” Turning to Master Kopapei, he added, “Kopapei, you are aware, I have more experience with warfare than any other mage in the Islands.”

Master Kopapei did not look at all surprised at this statement. He held up one broad hand, stopping Master Yamatei when the other mage seemed to want to protest, and nodded for Master Tnegun to continue.

“If we confront the Tolounnese mages directly, we will find either that they have the strength to crush us while maintaining their hold on Milendri, which would be bad, or else that they do not, which would be worse. I suspect they themselves do not know whether or not they have such strength. If we force them to respond to us, we may
all
discover that the Island has slipped their hold. We cannot afford that risk.”

“So, you suggest?” Master Kopapei asked.

“We may have lost the dragon winds, but … though the fire at the heart of the school burns low now our dragon has died, we yet have some of its strength contained in stone.”

Araenè flinched: she had thought the fire dragon might be ill, she had guessed it might be dying, but she had not known it had actually
died.
For a moment, she could remember nothing but its grief, the way it had pleaded with her:
Quicken my child.
Her throat closed with grief of her own, though she did not know why, and with fear. What if she’d been wrong? Wrong to give the dragon’s egg to Trei, wrong about everything? Too late to think again, too late to call it back to her hands—she’d been right, she
had
to have been right—

Then Master Tnegun plucked a sphere out of the air, and Araenè blinked and caught her breath, almost thankful to have been recalled to the immediate danger and terror of the present moment. Not that it was a dramatic sphere. It wasn’t brilliant with fire, as Araenè might have expected; it wasn’t even red or flame orange. It was a plain sphere of some black-flecked white stone, though with a distinctive greasy luster. Despite its cool, heavy appearance, it tasted of warm spices: nutmeg and cloves and cassia. It was nepheline … nepheline something. Nepheline syenite, that was it. Syenite was one of the stones “born in fire,” and nepheline … she couldn’t remember.

“You might introduce the Tolounnese soldiers to Island fire,” Master Tnegun said to Master Yamatei. “No matter how courageous, soldiers cannot climb steel heated to forge heat.”

Master Yamatei looked irresolute. Then, as another distant, reverberating crash echoed through the Island, he flinched and glanced quickly at Master Kopapei, who gave him a curt wave,
Go on.
Master Yamatei turned back to Master Tnegun with a nod. “Yes,” he said, and carefully, as though it might burn him, took the sphere Master Tnegun held out to him. Then he nodded to two of the adjuvants. All three of them disappeared. The air thumped flatly inward where they had stood.

“Akhai.” Master Tnegun turned to the youngest mage. “I would imagine Yamatei will be able to block a certain number of siege ladders. Nevertheless, many soldiers will undoubtedly gain access to Canpra’s underground areas. They will be most readily resisted if they can be held to the underground corridors rather than allowed to reach the open streets.” He offered the mage a sphere of polished granite and a smaller one of tourmaline. The granite sphere tasted of palm sugar and anise, the tourmaline of bitter ash and fenugreek.

Master Akhai looked surprised. “Granite for making and unmaking … very well. But tourmaline?”

“The brighter uses of tourmaline are not what I have in mind,” Master Tnegun said. “Think of smothering fire … smothering light. Think of summoning a heavy darkness into the belowground corridors and rooms of Canpra.”

Akhai smiled—rather a fierce smile. “Yes, good. Effective, yet indirect and subtle.” He, too, took several adjuvants with him when he vanished.

“Neither Yamatei nor Akhai will find their tasks so simple as you have suggested,” Master Kopapei said to Master Tnegun in a low voice. Master Tnegun did not seem surprised by this, but only nodded.

Fire bloomed suddenly, low against the red stone of the Island’s flanks, and a deep, cracking
boom
sounded through the air. Araenè whirled to look, along with the other apprentices, nor was she alone in exclaiming aloud as one of the siege ladders broke free from the Island and tumbled through the still air toward the glass-flat sea. Water fountained upward where it struck. Araenè looked quickly at Master Tnegun’s face.

He was not looking at her. His gaze was locked with Master Kopapei’s.

“No. Not so subtle as we might wish,” Master Kopapei said, as though answering a comment Araenè had not heard. “The Tolounnese mages won’t allow that to pass.” He paused, his head tilted to the side as though listening for a moment. Then he said, “Yes, there they are now. You feel that? They’re extending their attention quite far. And if they overextend and drop Milendri, well, they might be annoyed, but the results would be rather worse for us—”